7957th Year of Simoom’s Rage
37th Year of the Rule of King Ish’bael Dyeus
It came shambling into the grounds of Noble’s Way from the swollen gutters lining the streets of Sinner’s Place; a writhing ball of serpents. Bared fangs leapt forth from the bundle, greedily snapping at lingering bloodflies and passing vagrants. Slithering sounds emerged from the knot of tails and scales and jaws and fangs and tongues, but of the priest beneath the serpentine mass — not a single word was heard.
A priest of the Avaricious Serpent, he was one of many servants attending the needs of his god on this day. He and his companions had stripped down to their smallclothes, smearing their exposed skin in ripe honey and blood, gathered by the handful from shallow vases hanging along the temple walls. The priests of lesser gods might swim through the foetid sewers beneath Ilion until their skin was coated in the kisses of a bloodfly’s bite and covered in a film of human excrement, but the Brothers of the Avaricious Serpent knew the gutters were the preferred haunt of their god’s faithful. The snakes lived, bred, and died in those gutters, their eyes fogged over and blind to the sun’s light.
He knew his companions felt the poison coursing through their blood, driving them into a frenzied dance of uncontrollable, twitching limbs, eagerly reproduced by the urban masses. Whether in sincerity or mockery, nonetheless, the Avaricious Serpent would be pleased by their acts of worship. The guards of Noble’s Way parted for the procession of wild priests, steely gazes peering out from beneath their helms. Though the priest could not see their faces beneath the mass of scales which squirmed across his face and became entangled within his hair, he knew they would be wearing looks of disdainful disgust. The foreigners from beyond Anatolia could not even begin to imagine the delights found within the worship of the divine. And even as their congregation swelled, dancing along the streets of Noble’s Way, the Avaricious Serpent was not alone; for on this day, she was joined in kind by the Swollen Worm, the Mass of a Thousand-Eyed Flies, and the Malignant Birth. Whilst the scent of the Avaricious Serpent might be that of sickly sweet honey, the putrid miasma of her fellows was enough for the guards to hastily abandon their posts in search of a place to empty their breakfasts.
High above Ilion, the sky remained black – as it had been all morning – the sun blotted out by great clouds of bloodflies congregating high above the procession of death’s worshippers. Such an event was common in the summer for the bloodfly was a fickle insect, hatching solely during the sweltering summer heat to prey upon the swollen corpses of the dead. It was little wonder then why the followers of the Avaricious Serpent, the Swollen Worm, the Mass of a Thousand-Eyed Flies, and the Malignant Birth, all shared their festivals in the summer months. However, today was not summer and these were not the usual festivities. Carpets of bruised leaves – stained orange, brown, purple, and red – littered the gardens of the nobility’s walled estates, rotting away into a slick pulp that left the ground wet underfoot. No, on this day, death stalked the autumnal streets of Ilion.
The thousand year old city was built of white stone on and around a vast flat-topped hill which the locals called Ih’uus. Within the hill lay the compacted ruins of an ancient city, some hundred times older than the walls, streets, and markets which now surrounded it. Even the elaborate temples, estates, and towers resting atop Ih’uus itself were said to be ten times older than the city to which it lended its name. The faintest shadow of the hundred thousand year old city could only be found in the impressions of standing pools of water, encompassed by shin-high rounded foundations and crumbling monumental gates. When the wandering Peninsulan settlers first arrived before Ih’uss, they brought their deities with them, and the faded glories of foreign temples established in ages past were reconsecrated in their names; the stories of which are known only to withered priests and their middle-aged acolytes.
Now, Noble’s Way bisects Ih’uss, progressing along a sinuous tract that leads from the temples upon the hill’s crown, past the noble estates hugging at the curtain walls of the inner city. The priests continue to shamble along this timeworn path, a parade of the various ancient cults infesting the peripheries of Ilion. A dozen starving dogs come snapping at the priests’ heels – pausing momentarily – before gathering their senses and turning their attentions upon far easier prey. Swollen with decay and rot, half a dozen horses lay dying upon the damp cobbled streets. Their chests heave as the pneuma has yet to abandon their veins, empty eyes staring up into the clouds of bloodflies poised to descend upon the dying in their multitudinous droves.
Working in a wretched union, the flies and mongrels tear pieces of flesh free from the dying stallions and mares. It came away with a wet ripping noise, but the horses made no attempt to cry out for sympathy. Nobody would ever hear them above the chanting priests and the carnage flooding throughout the streets of Ilion. Marrow cracks and bones splinter as the skeletal dogs bury their muzzles into the carcasses.
Once they had eaten their share – which was no easy task for a starving animal which might not live to see its next meal – all that remained of the horses was a pile of augments; a steel femur to fix one shattered during a parade march, a knot of bronze circuity replacing its worn musculature, a pair of pneumatic air sacs filled with a delicate mixture of lightweight gases intended to stimulate their ageing lungs; anything to keep the pampered animals alive. Such were the favours bestowed upon mere horses by the nobility of Ilion, city state of the Mekhanite League.
Michael had been the proud owner of one such horse. He had named it Doxai. Glory. It now laid about a hundred feet away from where he stood, chains fettered about his ankles.